Posts Tagged ‘Mild’

Here are a couple of videos that were taken during the recent Dark Garden ’09 brewday that we’d forgotten about.

We haven’t got a free video editing tool to hand (any ideas of the best option, please leave a comment and let us know) so they’re a bit rough and ready and are just raw brewing clips, but you might find them interesting, who knows?!

A vigorous rolling boil is important, but so is nursing it through the first ten minutes or so to stave off a boil-over!

The bitter wort comes out with enough force to aerate the brew and add the yeast during the flow. We alternate between FVs every 5L to keep each vessel’s contents consistent.

It’s taken a week or more to get this brewday post up on the blog. The day job may not be as much fun as either brewing or drinking beer, but it certainly consumes a lot more time and energy. What can you do, eh?

The ’09 variety is much the same brew with a few exceptions: it’s a 50L brew length, the roasted barley has been reduced significantly in favour of more patent malt, the yeast has been swapped over to Nottingham Gervin, and ALL the hops are now from Boxshed garden Fuggles and WGV goldings plants. It truly is a Boxshed Dark Garden brew.

The details of the brew day have been lost in the protein haze of time, but everything went to plan over about six hours and the brew has already fermented out. The dark wort was great fun to mess about with and the smells were a treat, particularly the blend of malts and the Fuggle coppers. We can’t wait to get planning the recipe for this year’s Seasonal Stout now.

Anyway, enough with the words, here are some steamy pictures:

There are seven different grains in this brew, starting with 70% Pale Malt, then adding Munich, Crystal, Wheat, Chocolate, Patent Malts and finally some Roasted Barley

Mashing in was stiff at first with all that dry grain

But the final mix was pretty loose

Mash temperature just about right for a mild

Runnings had to be taken for the mash then three further 18L batches

Hopstopper about to be submerged

Plenty of time during the brew to weigh out Fuggles for the boil, WGV for the final 15, and more WGV to steep

Takes a long time to batch and fill this boiler before safely turning on the elements

All those hard earned garden hops waiting to swim in the sweet wort

Keeping close to boil temperature through the latter stages of sparging

The mash tun drains really well with the stainless hose siphon effect

Nearly up to volume and full boil

Two bowls of Fuggles in for the full 90 minute boil

Fantastic smells while taking care to watch the boilover

First load of WGVs in 15 minutes from the end of the boil along with the chiller

Mustn’t forget the Protofloc

More hops – this time to steep at around 80 degrees

My chiller takes a half hour to cool the new boiler. Time for a cold reward

Two sachets of Nottingham Gervin, rehydrated

All flowered up and chillin’

At 25 degrees the bitter wort is flowed into the FVs in turn in 5L batches to keep contents consistent

A jug of yeast for each FV, mixed in full wort flow for maximum aeration

Aiming for 1.037 for a 3.7% beer this time

Late at night, 50L at 1.037 safe and sound (bottom) with the Autumn Ale for company

Nottingham is much slower to get working than Southern yeast. It took 36 hours to get to this stage

Nearly fermented six days after brewing

Next step will see this brew transferred into secondary vessels for some extra fermentation time

On tap now and slipping down like a dream. I intended to wait until around Bonfire Night before cracking this one open, but a couple of friends came over for Sunday lunch and so it was the right time to give it a go.

Because it’s a new style to me, achieved what I wanted and is made from Fuggles grown in my own garden, I’d say this was definitely my most satisfying brew to date. Also it will inevitably become Boxshed’s definitive dark ale, and I’ll be knocking up another batch as soon as I can get my hands on some new malt stocks. Yum.

From the bine to the glass. Excuse the dour photo – call me old-fashioned but I only tend to drink pints out of work hours during the week, and it’s wintery out

The plan for this brew was to produce a mild with all of the characteristics of a complex porter. My favourite commercial dark beer is probably Darkstar Over The Moon, and so I wanted to brew something with the same layered malt texture and hoppy profile. I realised this wouldn’t strictly result in a Mild, but the ABV certainly would as I wanted this to be a drinker, not a rare treat.

The only other essential ingredient for this brew was to use my own garden grown Fuggles hops in the copper. I was quite excited about using hops I’d planted, harvested and dried myself, and so was extra careful to get this one right. What made this a little tricky was the fact I’d never actually brewed a dark beer before, and simple things like black as oil first runnings and not being able to just clarity very easily at any stage were all things I hadn;t really considered.

As far as the recipe goes, I settled on six different malts, including two pales, three coloured and some wheat for head retention. On the hop front, Fuggles were a given, and East Kent Goldings made a natural partner, with a decent aroma guaranteed from a nice chunk in to steep. Here it is:

The mash and sparge all went very smoothly. Doing the returns was a bit weird because I’ve never brewed a beer as dark as this, so I simply did six litres in jugs and rinsed the grit each time rather than go by clarity. Check out the gallery to see more – sorry the photos are so gloomy but it was a grim, cold night, our fuses had blown on that lighting circuit, and the steam was pretty dense!

This is the mash with 10.5L liquer. First dark mash for me

First runnings. Black as you like. I took six litres of runnings to be sure

Returning to coolbox mashtun with sophisticated foil thingymajig

Time to drain the mash

Mash drained and ready for sparging

Looks dreadful this picture, but its an HLT with 27L of hot liquer going through the lid mounted sparge manifold of a coolbox mashtun

Boiling point for the 32L sweet wort

In go the Fuggles from my garden. Bless ’em!

First East Kent Goldings aroma hops in; a few IBUs too at 15 minutes. Protofloc aswell

More EKG at flame out

Chilling

Into the FV at 22 degrees

Very pleased there was no clogging and I managed to get 21L at the required 1.040, which will do just fine for a Corni and a couple of bottles

Looked like a giant pint of Guinness after adding 24g Safale S-04 and whipping it up a storm